Irish dance and BDS
First off, yes, I'm sure I'm posting this highly-politicized article on the right blog! Not once did I think that my professional and private lives would come into contact in such a way, but I also never expected a CLRG feis to take place in Israel, a country which has a minuscule number of Irish dance schools.
For anyone who's unaware of what's going on, here's the short, short story. The Carey Academy (home base in England with branches in Russia and Israel) decided to host the first-ever feis in Israel this August, with adjudicators Seamus and Aine O'Se from Dublin and musician Anthony Davis from Birmingham, supported by O'Shea Irish Dance in Minnesota.
As the Israeli-Palestinian topic is generally not something that comes up when discussing Irish dance, there have been a lot of angry comments on both sides, many of which reflect the lack of understanding about the situation in Israel and Palestine, the political use of boycotts, and how this is about more than Irish dance.
Below, I'd like to lay out a few things in this order: what boycotts and BDS are and why it's used as a political tool; what violations are BDS supporters protesting, what arguments have been made for and against these points, and finally, how this relates to the Israeli Feis.
Boycotts have been used for decades to protest wayward governments, mostly in reference to protests over human rights violations. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement regarding Palestine has raised many comparisons to the 1980s boycott of apartheid South Africa, which is generally seen as having been very successful in the campaign to end apartheid. BDS specifically focuses on the rights in three areas: Palestinian refugees, Palestinians under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, and Palestinians in Israel itself. All three of these are contentious issues for opponents of BDS, which will be explained and countered later.
There are, of course, many different types of boycotts; the most popular of which are consumer, academic, and cultural. Consumer boycotts are pretty straightforward; it is refusing to buy products made in those countries being boycotted. In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (which due to my job I am used to referring to it as the IPC, and will do so throughout here), this comes in two forms: boycotting anything coming out of Israel, or boycotting only those items produced in the settlements and occupied territories. One of the more prominent recent examples of this was the boycott of SodaStream, which until recently faced boycotts over its factory in Ma'ale Adumim, an Israeli settlement in the West Bank.
Academic and cultural boycotts are much more controversial. Academic boycotts involve boycotting participation with academic institutes from Israel, including disallowing Israeli academics to participate in conferences abroad, and not collaborating with Israeli academics. Cultural boycotts are similar in discouraging outside artists from performing and working in Israel, and not allowing Israeli artists to perform and work abroad. The boycott of the Israeli feis falls under the frame of a cultural boycott.
There are a number of issues that BDS supporters and general pro-Palestinian or pro-peace activists are trying to call attention to, some of which were mentioned in previous paragraphs. The first issue is the Palestinian refugees, meaning those that were displaced from their homes during the 1948 and 1967 wars, as well as their descendants.
Many pro-Israeli activists attempt to discount the Palestinian refugees in a number of ways. First, they claim that some of the Palestinians are not refugees since they reside in the West Bank and Gaza, which is Palestinian land, even though they fled areas that are now part of Israel. This is where the right of return comes into play, and becomes even more contentious - Palestinians want the right to return to their homes where they existed, even if those places are in today's Israel; Israelis are fearful of a demographic imbalance which would leave the Jews a minority in the country, and insist that their homeland is the West Bank and Gaza, not Israel.
Another issue is the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, which I will deal with as two separate matters. First, Gaza. Since Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, they have claimed that Gaza is no longer under Israeli occupation. In theory, yes that is true, but the practice is quite different. While all Israeli soliders were withdrawn and all settlements dismantled, there is still tight non-Palestinian control over this area.
There are only two entry/departure points for Gaza for the general public: Rafah, which is the crossing into Egypt, and Erez in the north, which leads to Israel. Both of these points are extremely difficult to pass through; ordinary Gazans are regularly denied permission to cross into Israel and points beyond. This has affected students, athletes, people with medical issues who require treatment outside of Gaza, and many others. This repressively restricted access means they are effectively trapped in a open-air prison.
The occupation of the West Bank is slightly more straightforward. The West Bank is divided into three administrative areas, as per the 1995 Oslo Accords. Area A is places where there is full civil and security control by the Palestinian Authority. This accounts for only 3% of the total land area of the West Bank. Area B, which is Palestinian civil control and joint Israeli-Palestinian security control, accounts for 23-25% of the total land area. The final portion is Area C, which accounts for 72-74% of all land in the West Bank and is under complete Israeli civil and security control. Additionally, 99% of Area C, which contains most of Palestine's natural resources and open lands, is excluded from Palestinian use.
So, to the people who claim that Israel is not occupying the West Bank - what on earth do you call full civil and security control of a land area that doesn't belong to you? To use the common saying, if it quacks like a duck and looks like a duck...
Finally, we come to the Palestinians in Israel, who are more often referred to as Israeli Arabs. While they are Israeli citizens and (in theory) have the same rights as Jewish Israelis, many times these rights are infringed upon. Israeli Arabs face vast amounts of discrimination and racism in Israel, including discrepancies in schooling, land rights, and employment - a consistent problem even after the Or Commission, which set out in 2003 to identify the causes behind massive amounts of unrest in Israeli Arab communities.
Many who want to deny the unequal treatment of Jewish versus Arab Israelis point out that the situation in Israel is much more open, stable, and secure than any other country in the Middle East, and so nobody should be complaining. Yes, conditions generally are better in Israel in terms of safety and security, but why should they not try to be even better? To point out its strengths when confronted with its weaknesses is not enough.
So with all this, we're faced with the issue of the Israeli Feis and the boycott. In my opinion, the response from the feis itself, the Carey Academy, and O'Shea Irish Dance (OID) has been completely inadequate. OID has completely eliminated its social media presence due to the backlash against it for supporting the feis. All opposition to the feis has been scrubbed from the event's Facebook page, and there is only a single statement about the backlash. Unfortunately this means they have also deleted a question about Palestinians being allowed to compete (highlighting the issue of free travel into Israel from the West Bank and Gaza) and their answer, which stated that anyone from anywhere in the world would be allowed to compete - ignoring the very real issues that would occur for any potential dancer from the occupied territories to even make it to the event venue.
CLRG has taken a neutral stance (their official statement can be found here); while they aren't making any further responses, they are at least not erasing comments and critiques on their social media accounts. (I highly disagree with their neutral stance; by staying neutral they are essentially siding with the current situation in Israel - as Desmond Tutu said, "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.")
While I'm sure the Carey Academy had the best of intentions in running a feis in Israel, they have clearly been woefully unprepared for this reaction, which is a bit of a poor showing for anyone trying to run an organization or business in the country. I'm not saying that they should not have decided to run a feis there in the first place (even though I personally am opposed to this and support the boycott), but they should have been prepared to explain in more words than "We are dancing for peace and friendship" and "Why should we starve these people of their enjoyment of Irish dance just because they live in a country who's [sic] policies we do not agree with?", and address the very real concerns that the boycotters have.
Even handled properly, the Carey Academy and OID still would have faced a lot of backlash against the feis, but they could have made their school appear much better than they currently do. I understand that Irish dance is not typically an avenue for political protest, but when operating in a country with such a highly contentious political situation, one must make allowances for this sort of thing to happen. It's not a new concept, either; boycotts of South Africa were, as I mentioned previously, extremely powerful in the fight against apartheid, and it's not unexpected for supporters to hope for the same thing here.
I do not expect the petitions to force the cancellation of this feis, but I do hope that it opens up some awareness and critical thinking about these issues in the Irish dance community, and perhaps encourages dancers who were thinking about competing to boycott the feis instead.
Or we can go the route of this guy from boards.ie, which may actually be in violation of the Convention Against Torture: "I'm in favour of a cultural boycott, but having had to sit through a feis before, I'd be tempted to ignore the boycott this once, and make it mandatory for every member of the IDF to sit through every jig, reel and hornpipe."
For anyone who's unaware of what's going on, here's the short, short story. The Carey Academy (home base in England with branches in Russia and Israel) decided to host the first-ever feis in Israel this August, with adjudicators Seamus and Aine O'Se from Dublin and musician Anthony Davis from Birmingham, supported by O'Shea Irish Dance in Minnesota.
As the Israeli-Palestinian topic is generally not something that comes up when discussing Irish dance, there have been a lot of angry comments on both sides, many of which reflect the lack of understanding about the situation in Israel and Palestine, the political use of boycotts, and how this is about more than Irish dance.
Below, I'd like to lay out a few things in this order: what boycotts and BDS are and why it's used as a political tool; what violations are BDS supporters protesting, what arguments have been made for and against these points, and finally, how this relates to the Israeli Feis.
Boycotts have been used for decades to protest wayward governments, mostly in reference to protests over human rights violations. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement regarding Palestine has raised many comparisons to the 1980s boycott of apartheid South Africa, which is generally seen as having been very successful in the campaign to end apartheid. BDS specifically focuses on the rights in three areas: Palestinian refugees, Palestinians under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, and Palestinians in Israel itself. All three of these are contentious issues for opponents of BDS, which will be explained and countered later.
There are, of course, many different types of boycotts; the most popular of which are consumer, academic, and cultural. Consumer boycotts are pretty straightforward; it is refusing to buy products made in those countries being boycotted. In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (which due to my job I am used to referring to it as the IPC, and will do so throughout here), this comes in two forms: boycotting anything coming out of Israel, or boycotting only those items produced in the settlements and occupied territories. One of the more prominent recent examples of this was the boycott of SodaStream, which until recently faced boycotts over its factory in Ma'ale Adumim, an Israeli settlement in the West Bank.
Academic and cultural boycotts are much more controversial. Academic boycotts involve boycotting participation with academic institutes from Israel, including disallowing Israeli academics to participate in conferences abroad, and not collaborating with Israeli academics. Cultural boycotts are similar in discouraging outside artists from performing and working in Israel, and not allowing Israeli artists to perform and work abroad. The boycott of the Israeli feis falls under the frame of a cultural boycott.
There are a number of issues that BDS supporters and general pro-Palestinian or pro-peace activists are trying to call attention to, some of which were mentioned in previous paragraphs. The first issue is the Palestinian refugees, meaning those that were displaced from their homes during the 1948 and 1967 wars, as well as their descendants.
Many pro-Israeli activists attempt to discount the Palestinian refugees in a number of ways. First, they claim that some of the Palestinians are not refugees since they reside in the West Bank and Gaza, which is Palestinian land, even though they fled areas that are now part of Israel. This is where the right of return comes into play, and becomes even more contentious - Palestinians want the right to return to their homes where they existed, even if those places are in today's Israel; Israelis are fearful of a demographic imbalance which would leave the Jews a minority in the country, and insist that their homeland is the West Bank and Gaza, not Israel.
Another issue is the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, which I will deal with as two separate matters. First, Gaza. Since Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, they have claimed that Gaza is no longer under Israeli occupation. In theory, yes that is true, but the practice is quite different. While all Israeli soliders were withdrawn and all settlements dismantled, there is still tight non-Palestinian control over this area.
There are only two entry/departure points for Gaza for the general public: Rafah, which is the crossing into Egypt, and Erez in the north, which leads to Israel. Both of these points are extremely difficult to pass through; ordinary Gazans are regularly denied permission to cross into Israel and points beyond. This has affected students, athletes, people with medical issues who require treatment outside of Gaza, and many others. This repressively restricted access means they are effectively trapped in a open-air prison.
The occupation of the West Bank is slightly more straightforward. The West Bank is divided into three administrative areas, as per the 1995 Oslo Accords. Area A is places where there is full civil and security control by the Palestinian Authority. This accounts for only 3% of the total land area of the West Bank. Area B, which is Palestinian civil control and joint Israeli-Palestinian security control, accounts for 23-25% of the total land area. The final portion is Area C, which accounts for 72-74% of all land in the West Bank and is under complete Israeli civil and security control. Additionally, 99% of Area C, which contains most of Palestine's natural resources and open lands, is excluded from Palestinian use.
So, to the people who claim that Israel is not occupying the West Bank - what on earth do you call full civil and security control of a land area that doesn't belong to you? To use the common saying, if it quacks like a duck and looks like a duck...
Finally, we come to the Palestinians in Israel, who are more often referred to as Israeli Arabs. While they are Israeli citizens and (in theory) have the same rights as Jewish Israelis, many times these rights are infringed upon. Israeli Arabs face vast amounts of discrimination and racism in Israel, including discrepancies in schooling, land rights, and employment - a consistent problem even after the Or Commission, which set out in 2003 to identify the causes behind massive amounts of unrest in Israeli Arab communities.
Many who want to deny the unequal treatment of Jewish versus Arab Israelis point out that the situation in Israel is much more open, stable, and secure than any other country in the Middle East, and so nobody should be complaining. Yes, conditions generally are better in Israel in terms of safety and security, but why should they not try to be even better? To point out its strengths when confronted with its weaknesses is not enough.
So with all this, we're faced with the issue of the Israeli Feis and the boycott. In my opinion, the response from the feis itself, the Carey Academy, and O'Shea Irish Dance (OID) has been completely inadequate. OID has completely eliminated its social media presence due to the backlash against it for supporting the feis. All opposition to the feis has been scrubbed from the event's Facebook page, and there is only a single statement about the backlash. Unfortunately this means they have also deleted a question about Palestinians being allowed to compete (highlighting the issue of free travel into Israel from the West Bank and Gaza) and their answer, which stated that anyone from anywhere in the world would be allowed to compete - ignoring the very real issues that would occur for any potential dancer from the occupied territories to even make it to the event venue.
CLRG has taken a neutral stance (their official statement can be found here); while they aren't making any further responses, they are at least not erasing comments and critiques on their social media accounts. (I highly disagree with their neutral stance; by staying neutral they are essentially siding with the current situation in Israel - as Desmond Tutu said, "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.")
While I'm sure the Carey Academy had the best of intentions in running a feis in Israel, they have clearly been woefully unprepared for this reaction, which is a bit of a poor showing for anyone trying to run an organization or business in the country. I'm not saying that they should not have decided to run a feis there in the first place (even though I personally am opposed to this and support the boycott), but they should have been prepared to explain in more words than "We are dancing for peace and friendship" and "Why should we starve these people of their enjoyment of Irish dance just because they live in a country who's [sic] policies we do not agree with?", and address the very real concerns that the boycotters have.
Even handled properly, the Carey Academy and OID still would have faced a lot of backlash against the feis, but they could have made their school appear much better than they currently do. I understand that Irish dance is not typically an avenue for political protest, but when operating in a country with such a highly contentious political situation, one must make allowances for this sort of thing to happen. It's not a new concept, either; boycotts of South Africa were, as I mentioned previously, extremely powerful in the fight against apartheid, and it's not unexpected for supporters to hope for the same thing here.
I do not expect the petitions to force the cancellation of this feis, but I do hope that it opens up some awareness and critical thinking about these issues in the Irish dance community, and perhaps encourages dancers who were thinking about competing to boycott the feis instead.
Or we can go the route of this guy from boards.ie, which may actually be in violation of the Convention Against Torture: "I'm in favour of a cultural boycott, but having had to sit through a feis before, I'd be tempted to ignore the boycott this once, and make it mandatory for every member of the IDF to sit through every jig, reel and hornpipe."
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